Sunday, May 31, 2009

System of a Down are more interesting than your garden variety nu-metal band. This is the case for two main reasons, firstly they are clearly influenced by the Dead Kennedys in some of the singing style and secondly there is a clear influence of their Armenian roots in the music.

System of a Down mesh their Armenian influences with metal in a way which feels much more natural than even Sepultura's mixing of Brazilian rhythms. SoaD are also quite political in their lyrics... at least what you can understand of them.

All of this being said the album is still tiring after a while. Fortunately, however, the album is short enough for it not to be too taxing to listen to. So a good album as nu-metal goes... problem is the whole style is kind of crappy.

Track Highlights

1. Spiders2. War?3. Sugar4. Know

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The cover artwork is from a poster designed by the artist John Heartfield for the Communist Party of Germany during the Third Reich. The text in the original poster is: "5 fingers has a hand! With these 5 grab the enemy!". This slogan inspired part of the text contained in the back of the System of a Down album: "The hand has five fingers, capable and powerful, with the ability to destroy as well as create". Later, it is written in bold letters: "Open your eyes, open your mouths, close your hands and make a fist".

It starts off sounding like a lost album by Neil Young, then you come to the conclusion that it is the lost Neil Young Album IN SPACE! Once you get over the Neil Young comparisons you can start to appreciate it for itself.

The comparisons stop mainly at the voice, the composition draws heavily from Psychedelia and updates it for the late 90s, fortunately managing to sound quite timeless in the process.

This timelessness is the great strength of the album, that and the fact that some of the tracks are truly beautiful pieces, the arrangements are lush and complex, the album rewards repeated listenings but it is very hard not to like it from the start.

Track Highlights

1. Opus 402. Holes3. Helpless4. The Funny Bird

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The success of this album was a pleasant surprise for the band. After the commercial failure of See You on the Other Side, which Donahue considered to be the band's best album, they decided to make one more record entirely for themselves, ignoring commercial influences, and expecting to split up shortly afterward. Surprisingly, Deserter's Songs was their most successful album, and made them big celebrities in the UK and Europe, also making a smaller mark in the US.

I really liked Live Through This, the previous Hole album on the list, this one, even with the title track, leaves me a bit cold. Not that it isn't good, it is, not that it is boring, it isn't. But it just isn't great.

Live Through This reputedly had a lot of input from Kurt Cobain which might have helped it, particularly in lyrical terms, Hole is a more empty album, even with Billy Corgan's contributions.

That said the album is pretty consistently good, the tracks pack some punch even if is never as hard as those in their previous album. So as much as I love Courtney Love this is not an album that I particularly want to add to my library.

Track Highlights

1. Celebrity Skin2. Malibu3. Northern Star4. Playing Your Song

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The songs were written by the band, some with the help of Billy Corgan; Courtney Love penned all of the lyrics. The studio work took almost a year and a half, due to Love's rising movie career, fruitless recording attempts in New Orleans and Nashville in 1997, Corgan's involvement in songwriting and the actual album sessions, between Los Angeles, New York City, London and Miami.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

870. Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Track Listing

1. Intro2. Lost Ones3. To Zion4. Doo Wop (That Thing)5. Final Hour6. I Used To Love Him7. Forgive Them Father8. Every Ghetto Every City9. Everything Is Everything10. Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill11. Tell Him

Review

Yawn. This constant move of Hip-Hop into R&B frankly bores me. A style of music which was once all about righteous anger has now been transformed into easily digestible pop.

This idea of "cross-over" music is just a compromise and a watering down of the original art-form. And then the albums get longer and longer without having anything more to say. This album is a perfect example of that.

This album might be very well produced and all but this is not what I want from hip-hop or even from R&B. IT is somewhere in the middle not being very good at any of the two styles.

Though The Miseducation was largely a collaborative work between Hill and a group of musicians known as New Ark (Vada Nobles, Rasheem Pugh, Tejumold and Johari Newton), there was "label pressure to do the Prince thing," wherein all tracks would be credited as "written and produced by" the artist with little outside help. While recording the album, when Hill was asked about providing contracts or documentation to the musicians, she replied, "We all love each other. This ain't about documents. This is blessed."

In 1998, New Ark filed a fifty-page lawsuit against Hill, her management, and her record label, stating that Hill "used their songs and production skills but failed to properly credit them for the work." The musicians claimed that they either wrote or produced 13 of 14 tracks on Miseducation, despite the liner notes of the album claiming that it was "produced, written, arranged and performed by Lauryn Hill." New Ark requested partial writing credits and monetary reimbursement. The suit was settled out of court in February 2001 for a reported $5 million.

New Ark's lawyer, Peter C. Harvey, scoffed at Hill's image as a prolific songwriter. “She is not a musician, she is not a producer...I dare say if you put Lauryn Hill in a studio alone, she couldn’t do it again.". In a 2005 Interview, Lauryn responded saying " I am a Songwriter, Producer and a Musician and that I gave people too much credit that they didn't truly deserve. I can do it again, because I am a Artist thats speaks from my heart and from my mind. If people benefit off my new music to come then so be it, I will only make music to give information to my own children".

As of 2009, Hill has released only one album after Miseducation - 2001's MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 - which sold a fraction of Miseducation's numbers.

Madonna gives us a trippy album... clearly as much her own work as Paul Oakenfold's, Ray of Light is a relentlessly boring album. Well not really relentless, you can kind of enjoy the singles because you already know them and they have nostalgic value.

That being said the album is very well produced and some of the sounds in it are pretty good, however it just comes across as really dull for the most part. Long, boring, and not particularly original.

The lack of originality might not have been readily apparent for a US public, but for those in Europe and particularly the UK the trippy sound was anything but new. British DJs had been doing this for almost a decade now. So eh.

In 1999, the album received three Grammy Awards, including "Best Pop Vocal Album", and "Best Dance Recording." In 2003, the album was ranked #363 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2002, Q Magazine named it the 2nd Greatest Album of All-Time by a Female Artist.

Monday, May 25, 2009

1. The Fear2. Dishes3. Party Hard4. Help The Aged5. This Is Hardcore6. TV Movie7. A Little Soul8. I'm A Man9. Seductive Barry10. Sylvia11. Glory Days12. The Day After The Revolution

Review

Pulp react to the success of Different Class with this album. This is an album with no easy to love songs like Disco 2000 or Common People, in fact it seems completely tailored to be more difficult. This being said it does not mean that the album is unlikeable.

In fact there are plenty of pretty nifty tracks here, they are just not tailored to be played on mainstream radio. In fact this stuff is all pretty grim sounding while still being quite beautiful and I like that.

The album is just a lot more self-involved than Different Class, the social commentary is substituted by musings on fame and Jarvis Cocker's own evolution as an artist and a singer. This makes the album lose the quality of identification with the listener that is so present in Different Class, self-involvement is not always great but it is often interesting, just like this album.

Track Highlights

1. This is Hardcore2. Help The Aged3. Seductive Barry4. The Fear

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The cover art was directed by the American painter John Currin who is known for his figurative paintings of exaggerated female forms. Currin was also the art director for the "Help the Aged" video, based on his painting "The Never Ending Story." Advertising posters showing the album's cover that appeared on the London Underground system were defaced by graffiti artists with slogans like "This Offends Women" and "This is Sexist" or "This is Demeaning".

At times however, when she gets poppier she sounds a bit too much like Crowe. This might have to do with a production that is really too much for the style of music, this should be as plasticy as it ends up feeling.

It is because of this that the folksier the track the better it is in this album, and so there are some pretty great moments in songs like Jackson or Joy. Still this album has such renown in the music business for not much reason.

Track Highlights

1. Jackson2. Joy3. Drunken Angel4. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and was Willams' first album to go gold. According to Billboard in February 2008, the album has sold 811,000 copies in the U.S. It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. In 2003, the album was ranked number 304 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

You can see where David Gray is coming from, somewhere in there is Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, unfortunately Gray does not have the talent of any of these and is further damaged from having made this album when he did.

Gray made this album in the late 90s, where it seems no album could exist without adding some beats to the tracks in it. This really damages the overall survivability of the album, it now sounds dated in a way that made it sound fresh when it came out.

In the end he has some pretty good tracks in here, the stuff is pretty catchy as well, but there is plenty added to the music that really doesn't do it any favours and his singing style is also pretty derivative of aforementioned influences so in the end it gets a meh.

Track Highlights

1. Say Hello Wave Goodbye2. Babylon3. Please Forgive Me4. Sail Away

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

On August 11, 2001, White Ladder finally reached the top of the UK albums chart, on the back of the single success of "Babylon" (a remixed and edited version for radio, which omitted the third verse completely). The album had been selling steadily since its reissue the previous May, thereby setting a new record for the longest uninterrupted climb to Number One. The year 2001 also saw the release of two compilations of Gray's early works and unreleased material, The EPs 1992-1994 and Lost Songs 95-98, both of which followed White Ladder into the UK album chart Top Twenty.

With this album Fatboy Slim finally gets the balance right between mass appeal and Big Beat music. This is an album which can be enjoyed not just in a dance music context but generally.

The result of this is the fact that the album has become so popular that very little in it feels actually new. The singles have all been played to exhaustion and you've probably heard most other tracks in a variety of contexts, from adverts to the dancefloor.

That being said the album clearly deserves its popularity within the context where it was born. It is one of the most immediately appealing if not the most immediately appealing of any big beat album. And the sampling is pretty fluid and great never getting boring, one of the major faults of other albums in the genre.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

864. Turbonegro - Apocalypse Dudes (1998)

Track Listing

1. The Age Of Pamparius2. Selfdestructo Bust3. Get It On4. Rock Against Ass5. Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker6. Rendezvous With Anus7. Zillion Dollar Sadist8. Prince Of The Rodeo9. Back To Dungaree High10. Are You Ready (For Some Darkness)11. Monkey On Your Back12. Humiliation Street13. Good Head

Review

When you first look at the description of this album and this band, before having listened to it, you get pretty puzzled. A Norwegian gay Punk-Metal band with titles like Rendezvous with Anus which draws comparisons to Spinal Tap but is also universally loved by critics and has a truly impressive fan-base.

Then you listen to the album and you get it. This is probably the most interesting metal album since Black Sabbath, drawing as much from the Dictators and New York Dolls as from any metal band. In the end the name they gave their own music, deathpunk, seems to fit them perfectly.

This album is anything but boring, each track lives on its own and in the album as a little burst of anger, fun and entertainment. Frankly I loved this and I highly recommend it. Their influence is more than obvious on other Nordic punk bands such as The Hives but Turbonegro's sense of what makes Rock great, its ridiculousness, over the topyness and sheet fun makes them stand out as truly great.

Track Highlights

1. Get It On2. Prince of the Rodeo3. Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker4. The Age of PampariusFinal Grade9/10Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Moshable magazine commented: "Apocalypse Dudes is the perfect mix of classic 70's US punk / rock'n'roll like The Dictators, The Heartbreakers & The Ramones... every tune on this release is fucking brilliant". Even Jello Biafra was quoted as saying, "the new Turbonegro record is possibly the most important European record ever."

Saturday, May 16, 2009

863. Billy Bragg and Wilco - Mermaid Avenue (1998)

Track Listing

1. Walt Whitman's Niece2. California Stars3. Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key4. Birds And Ships5. Hoodoo Voodoo6. She Came Along To Me7. At My Window Sad And Lonely8. Ingrid Bergman9. Christ For President10. I Guess I Planted11. One By One12. Eisler On The Go13. Hesitating Beauty14. Another Man's Done Gone15. The Unwelcome Guest

Review

I am not a particular fan of Billy Bragg or Wilco, both of which have already been on this list. I must, therefore, presume that it is the Woody Guthrie element that brought this up in my consideration.

Bragg and Wilco collect a number of new Guthrie songs, so if you know his back catalogue you might not be familiar with these and they are well worth listening to. Some songs are better than other of course... I don't like Hoodoo Voodoo for example, but it is overall a great selection.

The songs run through a variety of styles and the arrangements done by Bragg and Wilco work pretty well, even if they are sometimes more reminiscent of The Band than they really should be. However, Guthrie was also an influence on The Band and particularly Bob Dylan, so this might just be a tribute. Great Stuff.

During the spring of 1995, Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora contacted English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg about writing music for a selection of completed Guthrie lyrics. Her father had left behind over a thousand sets of complete lyrics written between 1939 and 1967; none of these lyrics had any music other than a vague stylistic notation.

According to Bob Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles, Woody Guthrie offered his unpublished songs to Dylan, but the young singer was unable to get them from Guthrie's family (he tells a story about a reluctant babysitter).

Nora Guthrie's liner notes in Mermaid Avenue indicate that it was her intention that the songs be given to a new generation of musicians who would be able to make the songs relevant to a younger generation. Nora Guthrie contacted Bragg, who in turn approached Wilco and asked them to participate in the project as well.

Wilco agreed, and in addition to recording with Bragg in Ireland, they were given their own share of songs to finish.

Oh man, this album annoys me. It is quite musically competent, even if not linguistically: the song Minha Galera is a pitiful display of Portuguese. I cannot, however, get over the fact that this is a French-Spanish guy pretending to be South American.

Cultural appropriation always gets on my tits. This is no exception. Beyond this there is a surfeit of extremely annoying songs here, particularly Bongo Bong. I really get annoyed at this album.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

1. She Belongs To Me2. Fourth Time Around3. Visions Of Johanna4. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue5. Desolation Row6. Just Like A Woman7. Mr. Tambourine Man

CD 2

1. Tell Me, Momma2. I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)3. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down4. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues5. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat6. One Too Many Mornings7. Ballad Of A Thin Man8. Like A Rolling Stone

Review

In 1966 Bob Dylan performed a concert in Manchester that went down in history. In it a Mancunian famously screamed out Judas after Ballad of a Thin Man accusing Dylan of having sold out by going electric.

This recording captures that moment, the birth pangs of folk-rock in all their glory. The event has become part of Manchester's mythology, and even if it may now seem ridiculous to us, Dylan's move seeming perfectly natural, it sends us back to a time where people were invested in their music, in this case folk, with a strength that is rare these days. They were wrong, of course.

This recording is also particularly great because of Dylan's defiant attitude throughout. He knew what to expect and he knew that his shift midway through the concert to electric would elicit the results that it did, the slow clapping and abuse. But he didn't give a shit and gave the concert of his life. The most important bootleg in history? Definitely.

Track Highlights

1. Like A Roling Stone2. Tell Me Momma3. 4th Time Around4. Ballad of a Thin Man

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The early bootleg LPs attributed the recording to one of Dylan's tour-closing concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall. However, Dylan's now-legendary confrontation with a heckler calling out "Judas" from the audience, clearly heard on the recording, was well-documented as having occurred at Manchester's Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966. After "Judas!", there is clapping, followed by more heckles. One of those shouts, barely audible on the record, is a man shouting, "I'm never listening to you again, ever!" Dylan then says "I don't believe you", then after a long pause, "You're a liar." Then, Dylan can be faintly heard telling the band, "play it fuckin' loud", as they start to play "Like a Rolling Stone". At the end, the audience erupts into applause and Dylan says, "Thank you." After years of conflicting reports and speculation among Dylan discographers, the Manchester source was verified after the preliminary mix of a proposed Columbia edition was bootlegged in 1995 as Guitars Kissing & The Contemporary Fix. Dylan rejected that edition; three years later, he authorized a markedly different version for his second "Bootleg Series" release.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

860. The Dandy Warhols - The Dandy Warhols Come Down... (1997)

Track Listing

1. Be-In2. Boys Better3. Minnesoter4. Orange5. I Love You6. Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth7. Every Day Should Be A Holiday8. Good Morning9. Whipping Tree10. Green11. Cool As Kim Deal12. Hard On For Jesus13. Pete International Airport14. The Creep Out

Review

This is really not what I was expecting, all I knew of the Dandy Warhols were a couple of singles and little else, so I was quite surprised at the overall tone of the album. This is not, however, a bad thing.

Instead of what is quite attractive but disposable pop-rock of songs such as Bohemian Like You, the album reveals much deeper levels of exploration of psychedelic sounds and loads of soundscaping going on.

Of course the singles are still there and Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth is quite successful in making you sing along, but the overall tone of the album is much darker and often more interesting than the singles would make you think. This makes the album very uneven, unfortunately.

Track Highlights

1. Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth2. Boys Better3. Be-In4. Cool as Kim Deal

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

"Boys Better" was included on the Good Will Hunting and Igby Goes Down soundtracks and in the 2000 Gap "Lightbulb" ad directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

1. Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space2. Come together3. I think I'm in love4. All of my thoughts5. Stay with me6. Electricity7. Home of the brave8. The individual9. Broken heart10. No God only religion11. Cool waves12. Cop shoot cop...

Review

So Spiritualized were a better band when they were called Spacemen 3. Still, as it happens, they had a lot more success as Spiritualized. Why? Beats me. But it is definitely slicker stuff. Which is more immediately appealing but not always amazing.

That said, this is not a bad album. There is plenty to enjoy here, from the Michael Nyman inspired Broken Heart to the Dr. John participation in the very long Cop Shoot Cop... That said much of the album goes by unnoticed or like The Individual is just annoying.

The spaceyness that is present in the title is spread throughout the album but not completely consistently. As it is the album is more often interesting than actually enjoyable with a few moments of brilliance spread around.

The title of the album is taken from the philosophical novel Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, the context being: "Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. 'Ladies and Gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' But none of the people down there care."

The Verve have always seemed to me like a kind of slightly more interesting Oasis, and they kind of are that. They are substantially more original even while stealing samples from the Stones and Ashcroft is a better writer and a substantially less annoying singer.

That being said they never go much beyond competent. They create a foursome of competent power ballads in this album on which much of their fame is based and rightly so. Bittersweet Symphony, Sonnet, Dugs Don't Work and Lucky Man are all songs that defined not only the band but much of the year of 1997 into 1998.

That being said the album as a whole is not really great. It is pretty good and I can easily understand how it became so popular but it is no masterpiece. So pretty good but not mind-blowing in any way.Track Highlights

1. Sonnet2. Bittersweet Symphony3. Dugs Don't Work4. Lucky Man

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The Verve were known for their music's complex, immersive sonic textures. "Bitter Sweet Symphony" was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and remains the band's most well-known song. "The Drugs Don't Work", the Verve's only number one single in the UK, has become a concert staple for jam bands and other groups. The rest of the album alternates between wistful ballads like "Sonnet" and "Space and Time", spacey grooves like "Catching the Butterfly" and "The Rolling People", and all-out rockers like the Led Zeppelin-esque, pounding "Come On", which closes the album.

Some people in the music business who are unfortunate enough to die young get a personality cult going around them which often results in a overratedness of their career and achievements. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, Hendrix, Janis Joplin or Nick Drake being some examples.

Elliott Smith is not a case of a shit artist being made great by his death. On the evidence of this album he is something different. A lo-fi artist who uses his lo-fi wisely as a way to actually improve his sound, a gifted lyricist and player capable of the greatest of delicate moments as well as venomous spite.

This is, then, a great album. A pretty sad album but also one where each song is great in itself, listen to it enough and all tracks will end up imprinted in your mind. No need for overcomplicated arrangements or vast instrumentation, Elliott Smith shows what everyone can do at home, provided they have talent. And he did.

Track Highlights

1. Say Yes2. 2.45 A. M.3. Angeles4. Alameda

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The title is derived from the Søren Kierkegaard book of the same name, reflecting Smith's interest in philosophy, something he studied (among other subjects) at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Smith stated in a few interviews that the album follows the Kierkegaard philosophy in relation with the absurdist struggle between choosing an aesthetic life and an ethical life.

There is one obvious and immediately apparent aspect to this album, and that is its length. After 2 hours and 13 minutes of listening to Drum 'n' Bass you are about ready to call it a day.

This does not mean, however, that when you listen to this album in shorter dosages, you can't recognise its quality. Roni Size/Reprazent clearly make one of the best Drum 'n' Bass albums by smartly using Jazz elements together with the elements that Goldie had already introduced the mainstream to in Timeless.

The main problem with the album is then its length, not only of the album itself but of the individual tracks which often bore you to tears after you've gotten over some interesting element in the composition of the thing. On the other hand it works well as background music, and you won't have to change album for more than 2 hours.

Track Highlights

1. Hi Potent2. Heroes3. Brown Paper Bag4. Digital

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The double-disc set was the winner of the Mercury Music Prize in 1997, and often cited as their magnum opus. In the UK, the first disc was released by itself, while two different vinyl versions exist. The most common pressing is a 4LP version listed below, and the other pressing is a 5LP set and consists of the second disc of the CD version, with "Heroes" and "Digital" appended to the end; each song takes up one side each, with "Intro" and "Hi-Potent" taking the first side.